laughing with myself

There's probably a number of people who see me in passing and think I'm mentally unstable because I'm laughing out loud, gesturing, or making some ridiculous face while sitting by myself in a cafe or walking down the street. So be it. Without the context of my thoughts, these things don't make any sense to anyone else.

But for a change: some context. I've been reading the papers in the local coffee shop, and as is typical in newspapers, there's often some gems buried in the stories that are laugh-out-loud funny. Or maybe I am crazy. Judge for yourself.

In today's Boston Herald, regarding what is done to an invasive species of toad in Australia:

"We kill them with carbon dioxide gas, stockpile them in a big freezer and then put them through a liquid fertilizer process that renders the toads nontoxic," [Frogwatch coordinator Graeme] Sawyer said. "It turns out to be sensational fertilizer."

Perhaps it's the image that comes to mind. Or the use of the word sensational. Or the fact that the type of person I imagine using the word sensational isn't the type of person who would partake in liquifying toads.
And in yesterday's Herald:

"The city of Boston is under siege from armed teenage marauders and cretins with chromosome damage who have paralyzed Boston," [Curtis] Sliwa told the Herald yesterday. Sliwa was announcing his intention to bring his Guardian Angels to Boston after yet another murder here.

Must be the alliteration. Or that it sounds like it could be the beginning of some lyrics. Or maybe it's just that my sense of humor is a little twisted. But I'm okay with that.

vile day

If there's reason to hate Valentine's day, surely it's due to the women who peddle gendered crap. Take, for instance, a story titled "Cracking the Cupid Code" in today's Boston Globe. Monique Doyle Spencer clues us in on how "women" see Valentine's Day:

[W]omen use V-Day as the crystal ball of your fate. They peer into it and look for the Three Signs of Your Doom. First, the gift you give is gravely less expensive than the one you were given. Second, your gift is not wrapped. Third, you give an Idiot gift. My own husband gave me a duplicate pair of cheap earrings I already have "because you like them so much."

She also gives us such gems as:

If you send her a dozen roses, be sure to send them to her workplace. Making her female coworkers feel bad will delight her.

and

Do not, under any circumstances, put any gift in a ring-shaped box. Even if you buy her the biggest diamond earrings in the solar system, you must still remove them from their ring-like box. Otherwise, you will hear the words Y-E-S, Y-E-N-T-A, A-I-S-L-E, and V-E-I-L. Avoid taking her to N-E-V-A-D-A for the same reason.

Ugh. this is supposed to be humorous, but it's just nauseating. Spencer then proceeds to advise against shopping at Victoria's Secret unless you're at least engaged (huh?), but says you still have to give a "romantic" gift if you give lingerie, like a book of poetry.

Folks, not all women delight in romance novel trash, being petty and making others jealous. All this after an oh-so-enlightening story yesterday ("Hooking Up Is the Rage, But Is It Healthy?") about how hooking up is bad for girls because they are more emotionally attached to sex than guys (that story also would have you believe that the hook-up trend is so prevalent that no one young has relationships, yet the only people interviewed are two women in *gasp* relationships).

Oh, Globe, you really don't know what the kids are up to these days, do you?

Anyhow, more power to people who enjoyed a happy, sappy day, today or any other day, regardless of gender (I'm so sending flowers, giving lingerie and putting something in a ring-like box for some boy next year). But me, I'd prefer a pleasant surprise any other day of the year. At least tomorrow brings the joys of half-price chocolates. Mmm, chocolate.

spare me

I don't usually put effort toward buying things that are available for free. I can't imagine most people would.

So when I passed a man selling papers outside of the Whole Foods in Central Square, I felt more justified in my typical response, "Not today, thanks." Instead of the usual Spare Change News hawker, there was a man trying to sell copies of The Student Underground, which is widely available for free, on purpose.

But if he manages to get some cash from wealthy yuppies, and those yuppies actually read The Underground, I'm not going to complain.

bitter morsels

Dis.gust.ing. That's pretty much all I have to say about Yahoo usurping del.icio.us.

But how did I not hear about this until just days ago? Have I been hiding under a rock? I mean, it happened not too long after the Flickr purchase, but I heard nary a word. With Flickr, it was obvious because of the login page change. But del.icio.us never stopped looking, well, delicious.

And users who bothered to read the del.icio.us blog (oops) are concerned about just that - Yahoo splattering ads everywhere and generally messing everything up. Can't say I'm not concerned about that myself. (And I guess I'm a dumbass for not ever reading the del.icio.us blog, because the news was right there. But why Yahoo decided not to disclose the terms of the agreement and kept it pretty quiet is a tad mysterious - not a peep on the press releases page.)

*Sigh.* So many good little services on the web are gonna get swallowed up by the big guys. So long, anonymity (and probably many open-source projects).

However, if someone offered me enough cash-money to retire right here and now ... I would be tempted to take the money and run. So I can't say I blame them. But still ...

new news

Misanthropicity isn't getting updated anymore because its creator now has better things to do, namely his brand new daily newspaper in Cambridge, Mass. For city dwellers here, we've now got a free Monday-Friday paper that beats the hell out of the Metro when it comes to, well, any original content. This isn't the place to get your national or international news; the articles are written by locals for locals, part hard news and part features, and there's an hour-by-hour events calendar with easy to find categorical tags such as "rock," "lecture," "comedy" and "art," among others. The design is clean, the editing is tight, and I just hope it takes off, because it's filling a gap and filling it well. Oh, yes, the important parts: it's called Cambridge Day, and you can pick it up only in Cambridge, mostly in retailers and restaurants (think local businesses such as convenience and grocery stores, 1369, Rosie's, etc). You can go to Cambridge Day online if you want to check out submission and advertising policies, but the content is restricted to print at this time. Oddly, none of the local media has yet caught on or done a write-up or mention in a media column. Get on the ball, people!

eracing spilled ink

Journalists always used to report race in crime stories. To put it more accurately, they always reported when the accused was black, but made no such specification for whites. The trouble was (and is) that people made associations in their mind - black:thief, black:murderer, black:rapist, black:drugs, et cetera. For the writers, race always was assumed to be that of the dominant culture, and if that wasn't true, they pointed it out because it was different to them. The problem being that when race wasn't specified in crime stories, many people just assumed it was another black criminal.

Media stereotypes hit us in the face years after origination. Polls have shown that people are more afraid of black folks. Meanwhile, crime statistics showed more white male criminals than black, and violent crimes were being committed by people the victims knew. But the fear factor was an indicator that the messengers were doing something wrong.

Nowadays, professionals and educators - including the Poynter Institute, a respected organization that sets a lot of standards - have reached consensus: Race generally shouldn't be mentioned in stories unless it it crucial to the story (race relations, redistricting, hate crimes et cetera). In crime stories, the race of the perpetrator should not be mentioned unless it is a keystone to the crime (hate crimes) or unless there is a description of the perpetrator so complete that anyone could identify the person walking down the street. Thus, a "black man in his 30s, about 5'8" and 200 pounds" describes too many people to be able to clearly identify him. But a "white man in his 30s, about 5'8" and 200 pounds with brown hair, a mustache, a large, diagonal scar across his left cheek and a tattoo of a black heart on his right upper arm" would be specific enough to recognize the guy on the street.

Still, Fox News and the Boston Herald repeatedly indentify race in crime stories with little to no other identifiers aside from gender. In most cases, it's black guys. In one Herald story I did see a suspect labeled as a white male, but that was just once.

Some might argue that with media ownership concentrated in the hands of so few, and those few having a vested interest in retaining power and structures that support their power, it is an intentional but subtle effort to divide the working class along race lines. Or some might argue it's as unintentional as it probably was for a lot of journalists 50 years ago - and that we simply have forgotten history. Neither collective amesia nor the corruption of power is a palatable option.

pressing issues

In a country where free speech and freedom of the press are so praised, it's ironic how censored these freedoms are. All you have to do is read mainstream media, and it's evident something is missing in U.S. newspapers and news programs. But if you're curious to know what's really happening in the world, it is easy to seek out alternatives.

The U.S. government has a vested interest in keeping American journalists away from the action: Vietnam and Walter Cronkite are evidence of that. Media still have a powerful effect on public opinion. The truth of war ain't pretty, and the government's better off if people think everything's going according to plan and see a "clean" and "sterile" war.

The few owners of mainstream media have a vested interest in turning a profit. Entertainment is cheaper to produce than news and seems to hold people's attention in this ADD era (however, I would argue people only watch the crap because they a) still expect that networks deliver timely and important news and b) that's all that is available - they'd still watch the 10 o'clock news if there were actual news included). Sending reporters overseas or into dangerous situations are costly endeavors for a news organization. While there are plenty of journalists itching to go to Iraq, media owners instead rely on wire services (limiting a diversity of perpectives); they'd rather save (and make) money.

With U.S. journalists at home and unable to confirm firsthand information on the situation in Iraq, the government is all too willing to take advantage and "help" them report fallacies. Welcome back, PSYOPS. Then again, it's hard to take advantage of those already eager to help out.

Deceitful behavior is expected from the government. But people hold news organizations to a higher standard. If only the government and media monopolists would get out of the way.

torture this

Most of the time I can laugh at the Boston Herald's feckless opining. But today's editorial was over the top. The hack editorial team at the Herald has decided that there is not really any torture taking place at Guantanamo Bay, despite a report by the Red Cross.

The Herald smugly takes the soapbox to say that humiliation, solitary confinement, extreme temperatures and psychological mind games are just part of standard operating procedure, nothing to see here:

A photo accompanying the Times story even shows this nightmarish torture chamber: a solitary metal folding chair in a clean, white-walled room with a metal ring in the floor on which to attach a detainees' leg shackles. Oh no, not that!

It gets better with this non sequitur regarding healthcare workers:

The most damning allegation is that the facility's medical staff was feeding information to the interrogators about detainees' mental health and vulnerabilities. Hmmm. Who would you rather involve if you were being "tortured," Uday Hussein or a highly trained healthcare worker?

Nevermind that the healthcare worker in this instance is not looking out for the well being of the prisoner, but rather helping the screws exploit his weaknesses and vulnerabilities.

Torture and fear are methods the state has, is, and will continue to use to extract information. Torture can be as simple as deprivation from basic needs - food, water, clothing, warmth - to playing psychological mind games to physically threatening behaviors to actual physical abuse. Different people have different breaking points.

If the Herald editorial writers were held incommunicado with limited (if any) access to basic needs; were kept in rooms without natural light, kept in rooms that were so cold that they had to hunch in a fetal position on the concrete floor to try to stay warm (the bare steel "beds" are too cold to sit on, let alone lie down on), rising only to stretch tense and tender limbs; if they were being examined by mental health experts watching for their breaking point, constantly being verbally and physically abused by guards, then would they see it as torture?

How about if they were held under such conditions as long - almost three years now - as prisoners have been held at Guantanamo Bay? It took me less than three days in jail to recognize torture techniques.

I guess you just had to be there.